


slow like pseudoephedrine

by boxedblondes



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, POV Third Person, POV Villanelle | Oksana Astankova, Post-3x05, baths are gay and villanelle just wants to feel loved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:40:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24149851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxedblondes/pseuds/boxedblondes
Summary: What is a family and where does it live? In the hollow of your chest? In the spaces between your ribs?After Russia comes the hard part.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 50
Kudos: 370





	slow like pseudoephedrine

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't going to write this, but then... I did. ✌️ 
> 
> \- Definitions at the beginning are consolidated and bastardized from the Merriam-Webster and Oxford English Dictionaries  
> \- Grizmet is not a real place in Russia, but a train journey from Perm (Oksana's hometown in the books) to Barcelona would take roughly 3 days ~~Why did I do research for this fic???~~  
>  \- I have no clue where exactly V is supposed to live in Barcelona, but for the purposes of this fic her house is located somewhere in the Sant Gervasi - la Bonanova neighborhood(s)  
> \- Warnings for alcohol use and the fact that Villanelle, like... killed her family
> 
> Title from "Writer in the Dark" by Lorde... you know, "I am my mother's child," etc. etc.

**family** /ˈfam(ə)lē/ _n._

  1. A group consisting of one or two parents, their children and close relations
  2. A group of people united by certain convictions or a common affiliation
  3. A group of things related by common characteristics



What is a family and where does it live? In the hollow of your chest? In the spaces between your ribs? In the orphanage, such things were not discussed, except when necessary – a bargaining chip, a means to an end. _Your family is dead_ , they would say. Or, _your family did not want you_. And the little girl or boy would dry their tears and keep quiet, because they couldn’t argue with that logic.

Even little Oksana, though she could never quite reconcile their words with her own memories, had no choice except to believe them. _If they wanted me_ , she would think, _I would not be here._ And this was obvious, so simple even a child far less intelligent than she could understand it. 

She wonders now whether the truth would have come out eventually. If she had waited just a little bit longer to burn that place to the ground, would she have redefined her own reality before it was too late? Would the Twelve have found her so easily? Would she have gone with them so willingly?

The train ride back to Barcelona is long, and Villanelle has days’ worth of time to ponder these thoughts. She could have taken a plane, of course – she certainly has the money – but more than anything, she needs to exist apart from the world for a little while.

Now that her mother is dead, Villanelle finds she has so many questions she wants to ask her. Stupid, childish things ( _Why him? Why me?_ ), as well as deeper, more existential ones ( _How can it be my fault when I never asked for any of this? Did you ever really love me, as a mother should love a daughter? Do you love me still?_ ).

It’s futile to think this way, she knows that. But the plaster she’s shaped around herself all these years is worn now and beginning to crumble, the mask slipping to reveal the truth underneath. The things she knew, the things she _thought_ she knew – they don’t make sense anymore. None of it makes sense. She misses the days when she could claim to be emotionless, entirely inaccessible. She misses the ease of waking up each morning with the knowledge that she is whoever she says she is that day.

Curiosity killed the cat, as they say, and for the first time Villanelle wishes she didn’t have nine lives. Is it better to know, or not to know? Ever since Rome, when Konstantin planted that seed in her head, she’s wanted nothing more than to know _everything_ about her family – where they are, what they’re doing, if they’re happy. But now that she has that knowledge, all she wants is to give it back.

The pain is enormous and exquisite. Villanelle understands, by the simple logic of cause and effect, that this is her fault. If she had just gone on with her life as it was – happily believing a lie, blissfully unaware of the truth of her family, her childhood, the sullied love that raised her – maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much now. 

_But then_ , she wonders, _wouldn’t you always feel that something was missing? Wouldn’t you drive yourself crazy with the thought that there was something more?_

Perhaps. But the sense of something missing can be a comforting thing sometimes. In her former life, she always had a secret purpose, something sharp and scattered underlying her day-to-day motivations: the mystery of a family she could hardly remember, had barely known. What does she have now? Where does she go from here?

–

Somewhere between the train station and her too-good-to-be-true house in the foothills of the Serra de Collserola, Villanelle purchases a fifth of vodka. It’s shitty, of course, because this is Spain and not Russia, but she doesn’t have enough energy to care today. Then, somewhere between her front door and the bedroom, she proceeds to get thoroughly, blisteringly sloshed.

Vodka drunk, as her countrymen know, is an entirely different and more advanced sort of drunk than any other kind. For Villanelle, this results in a rapid-cycling journey through the stages of grief all over her beautiful, lonely house.

Denial turns her into a dead-eyed zombie, staring at herself in the bathroom mirror and taking great, sloppy mouthfuls of liquor straight from the bottle. Anger has her smashing every smashable thing in the kitchen, until the floor is a glittering minefield of glass and dust. She lies on the floor amidst the chaos, and bargains with God and the devil and several pagan deities in a slurring monologue of every language she knows, ranting at the walls and the ceiling as the sky outside grows dark. 

Then depression, swift and crushing. She cries with it, great heaving sobs that make her feel like she’s turning herself inside out. As the grief begins to subside, she wipes her nose with the back of her hand, catches a whiff of the gasoline still clinging to her hair, and begins to cry all over again. Finally, after an hour or two of this, she strips down to her underwear and falls into a blissful, blackout slumber, spread-eagle on top of her bed. 

The headache wakes her up, but the nausea is what forces her, groaning, to actually open her eyes and take stock of the situation. Villanelle was too drunk to remember to close the curtains last night, and the achingly bright morning sun now illuminates the utter mess that is her bedroom. She has the sudden sense memory of throwing the empty vodka bottle against the kitchen floor just to see how it would shatter, and groans again at the thought of cleaning up broken glass in her hungover state.

“Oh good, you’re awake,” says a familiar voice. “I thought you might be dead.”

“Eve.” Villanelle cracks open her eyes again and, sure enough, Eve’s sprawled across the loveseat at the other end of the room. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“You sent me a text at 3 a.m.,” Eve says. 

“No I didn’t.”

“Yes, you absolutely did. It made no sense, and Konstantin was a bitch about giving me your address.” Eve shifts her weight around on the sofa and it creaks lowly. “You look like shit, by the way.”

“Thank you.”

“Why in the world did you decide to get trashed on a Monday?”

“Party for one.”

“Ha ha,” Eve says, too dry to even be considered a fake laugh. “For real, though.”

Villanelle is _so_ not ready to have this conversation. She has become aware of the fact that she’s entirely naked except for underwear and a bra (though it seems Eve has half-assedly placed a blanket over her while she slept), and she feels seven kinds of raw and unpretty. 

But whatever. “I went to Russia,” she says. “I saw my family.”

“I thought your family were all dead?” Villanelle can detect a distinct note of interest in Eve’s tone, the intelligence agent part of her brain switching on. 

“I thought so too,” she says. “Anyway, they are now.”

“ _Jesus_.”

“Well, most of them.” Villanelle does her best to shrug from a horizontal position.

“What the hell happened?”

“My – ” Villanelle starts, but then she has to stop before she does something horribly embarrassing like cry in front of Eve. She closes her eyes against the feeling, and blames the residual alcohol in her bloodstream for the scattered state of her emotions.

Deep breath, then. “My mother didn’t love me.” Another. “She said I had to leave because I wasn’t a part of the family.”

“That’s… God, that’s fucking awful. Villanelle, I’m so sorry.” 

From behind her closed eyes, Villanelle can hear Eve stand up from the couch. The floorboards creak with her footsteps as she comes slowly but surely closer to Villanelle’s personal little pile of misery. As Eve sits down on the side of the bed, Villanelle rolls ever so slightly into the hollow Eve’s weight has created.

“Please,” she says. “Talk about something else. Anything.”

“Okay.” Eve clears her throat. “Um. My husband died.” It comes out casual enough, but her voice cracks, just the tiniest bit, on the last word.

“What?” Villanelle turns her head, too quickly. Once the awful sloshy feeling has subsided, she looks up at Eve’s impenetrable back. “How? Wait, _when_?”

“I take it you didn’t kill him then,” Eve says, wry to the point of emotionlessness. 

“I wouldn’t,” Villanelle says. Her head is aching and her mouth is unbearably dry, so it comes out a whisper. She tries again, more firmly. “I would never do that to you, Eve.”

Eve sighs, and the mattress shifts with her. “I know.” She turns around, contemplates Villanelle for a moment. “I almost wish you had, though. It would make things… easier.”

“What things?”

Eve’s mouth quirks up, just slightly, into a smile. And then it falls. “I don’t have anyone left now,” she says.

Something in Villanelle’s chest briefly twinges, an echo of whatever all-encompassing pain had overwhelmed her on the train. “You have me.”

“Do I?” Eve laughs, but it sounds more like a sob. “Last time I checked, you wanted me dead.”

Villanelle tosses her head back onto the pillow and covers her eyes with one hand. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t want you to be dead.” Her voice cracks pathetically, and she hears her mother’s voice in her head. _You are not a child. You are not a child. You are not a child_.

“Villanelle…” Eve starts. The back of her hand comes up to rest against Villanelle’s forehead, cool and gentle, like she’s checking her temperature. “Are you okay?”

Villanelle inhales shakily through her nose. “No,” she says. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, listen.” Eve begins to run her fingers along Villanelle’s hairline, smoothing back stray, sweaty strands as she encounters them. “We can have a proper conversation about all this later. But right now, is there something I – what do you need?”

The motion of her hand is soothing, and her fingertips are smooth and soft. Villanelle knows her hair is unbearably gross right now, greasy and smelling of gasoline. There wasn’t a shower on the train, and she didn’t manage to take one during her drunken rampage last night. She feels small and pathetic, a child not even a mother could love. And yet…

And yet, Eve is still touching her hair – touching _her_ – so carefully, and there is a kindness in her motions. Villanelle feels, in this instant, like a fragile thing, something precious and delicate. She has never before been these things to anybody. She swallows down the lump in her throat for the dozenth time this morning and runs Eve’s question through her mind. _You are not a child_ , her mother says again, ghostly in memory. 

_You are not a child._

_I want to feel like one_. 

Eve is good, and kind. Eve came here, somehow, in the middle of the night _for her_. Eve continues to come back, no matter what. Eve will not hurt her, or laugh at her. Eve is touching Villanelle’s disgusting hair and asking her what she _needs_. So maybe Villanelle can be a little brave. 

“Please,” she asks Eve, “will you wash my hair?”

 _You are not a child. You are not a child. You are not a child_.

“Of course,” Eve says. “Of course.”

 _I want to feel like one_.

_Please._

–

With the white-noise whirring of the overhead fan and the absolute bliss of the hot water, Villanelle could be in a dream. She washes herself slowly, mindful of her head and her stomach and the places that ache from sitting on a train for three days. Eve sits on the closed lid of the toilet and hums to herself as she looks through a Spanish copy of Vogue. Her affected nonchalance is a bit overdone, but Villanelle can appreciate the commitment. 

She has so many questions she wants to ask Eve. Like, _Did your mother love you?_ and _Did you love her? Are you sure?_

These questions, she’s always thought, are simple ones. They should have easy answers, cut and dry. But recent events have complicated this. She wonders if this complication, too, is universal.

“Eve?”

“Hmm?” Eve, none-too-subtle, keeps her eyes firmly fixed on the magazine.

“I – What is your mother like?” She’s not sure that’s the question she wants to ask, but it’s a good enough jumping-off point.

Eve exhales loudly through her nose, and turns the page. “That’s kind of a big question,” she says. “I don’t really – I was closer to my father. But I love my mom. She’s just – well, I don’t really see her all that often anymore.” She shrugs. “She’s just… a mom, I guess.”

 _Just a mom_. That sounds nice. Villanelle brings her knees up to her chest, curls her arms around them. She tilts her head to the side and rests it atop this configuration. Eve looks different from this angle, she thinks. There are dark circles under her eyes and an unconscious tension gathered like thunderclouds at her temples. She looks tired, worn. But still beautiful.

Maybe that’s the secret of the thing, Villanelle thinks: That things can be both beautiful and inelegant. That there is nothing in the whole world that is just one thing. It’s an oddly comforting thought.

“...Villanelle?” Eve says, and Villanelle looks up into her lovely, worried eyes. She is abruptly aware that Eve has said her name more than a few times.

“Sorry,” she says.

“You got lost for a moment there,” Eve says. “Where did you go?”

 _I was in a dream_ , Villanelle thinks. “I don’t know.”

“Are you ready for me to wash your hair?”

“Oh. Yes.” Villanelle lets go of her knees and tilts backward until the water closes over her head. She comes up for air to the sound of magazine pages rustling as Eve turns completely around to arrange it just so on the counter. _Such a prude_ , Villanelle thinks. If only she had the energy to do something about it.

Instead, she reaches up for the shampoo bottle and sets it on the lip of the tub. “Ready.”

If heaven is real, Villanelle thinks some time later, it is the feeling of Eve’s hands kneading slow circles into her scalp. She has no choice but to close her eyes and simply revel in it. 

“Is this okay?” Eve asks.

“It’s perfect.”

Did her mother ever wash her hair as a child? Villanelle can’t remember such an occasion. Come to think of it, she can’t remember _anybody_ ever washing her hair for her. Unbidden, the pressure behind her eyes begins to build again. More and more, and she _can’t take it_ , this ache in her chest. Eve’s hands are so tender in her hair, so gentle. 

_You never cried as a baby,_ says her mother’s voice in her head. 

_I did cry_ , Villanelle thinks. _I did_. And so the dam breaks.

The tears, long overdue, are warm as blood against her cheeks. They settle damp and salty at the corners of her mouth, then drip down arrhythmically against her chest. Villanelle gives into it, all of the betrayal and sadness and rage and pain, and weeps silently as Eve, oblivious, continues her lovely ministrations.

It’s _so much_ , to feel like this. Villanelle can’t imagine how people go around carrying all this emotion inside of them all the time. It must be unbearable.

Eve’s hands lift out of her hair, and she rinses them in the water at Villanelle’s back. “Okay,” she says. “Conditioner? I honestly don’t read Spanish so I don’t know which bottle is… ”

Villanelle tamps down a sniffle and braces herself for the moment of realization. Sure enough, it comes.

“Oh my god, are you crying?” Villanelle can’t see her, but she can tell from the naked concern in her voice that Eve’s expression, if she were to look at her face right now, would be enough to break her completely. 

“It’s okay,” Villanelle says, and she’s disgusted by how thick and nasal it comes out. “I don’t know why this is happening.”

She wouldn’t blame Eve for leaving right now, just pulling a full one-eighty and walking out to catch the next plane back to London. Villanelle has never felt quite this small and pitiful, this utterly, terribly raw.

But she should know by now not to underestimate Eve. Warm, strong arms wrap around her shuddering shoulders as Eve pulls her as close to her chest as the wall of the bathtub will allow. Eve had rolled her sleeves up carefully as Villanelle drew the bath (dark grey cotton-polyester blend, _god_ ), far enough past the elbow to keep them dry. That’s all ruined now, and another wave of _feeling_ rushes up inside her at the thought. She can hear Eve’s heartbeat, and it’s exhilarating.

“Your shirt,” Villanelle says, muffled by tears and her proximity to Eve’s body. “You’re getting it all wet.”

Eve laughs, the feeling of it rippling across the fragmentary space between them. “Of _course_ that’s what you’re worried about,” she says. “Don’t worry, you’re rich. You can buy me another.” She laughs again, soft and indulgent. 

Villanelle smiles into her chest. This is enough, she thinks. Just this.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried my very best to keep V in-character/not "too soft," while also giving her a chance for some true comfort. Please rate my success on a scale of 1-10.
> 
> I'm on tumblr [@boxedblondes](https://boxedblondes.tumblr.com/)


End file.
